A peep into life in Africa, through the eyes of an African Reformed Baptist pastor.

Water, water, water, everywhere. What else do you expect? I am a Baptist, and I live in the land of the mighty Victoria Falls!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Farewell to our 2011 Grade Seven Class

“Train up
a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”
(Proverbs 22:6).

Eagle's Nest School Grade Seven Class singing a hymn to the congregation

(PREAMBLE: Let me welcome the 80th follower to this blog. I wish I knew the name but I failed to figure that out. I am technologically challenged! The good news, at least for me, is that we are slowly reaching 100,000 views. I know that is nothing for some blogs because that is their daily readership. I should not despise the days of small things. So, I am watching the counter very closely.)

Every year just before our Grade Seven
pupils sit for their final primary school leaving examinations, we hold a
special service for them and their parents. The aim of this service is to
provide the church with an opportunity to meet with the children and their
parents, because 80% of them are not members of our church.

Misheck Kumwenda leading in worship

It is also a good opportunity for the members
of the church to meet the teachers because, again, most of the teachers of our
church school are not members of Kabwata Baptist Church. They are members of
sister churches. Hence, this once-a-year service provides a window of
opportunity for all who are involved in the school to meet with the members of
the sponsoring church, and vice versa.

In the midst of a secularised society, the
provision of Christian education goes a long way to arrest the galloping
atheistic horse that has destroyed what once was the Christian West. The
foundational truths of God and his world need to be the moorings to which all the
disciplines of education are anchored.

Chilambu Filakati doing the Bible Reading

Once the poison of secular education is
injected into the primary infrastructure of the worldview of children, it
destroys the development of their thinking from that point onwards. Their world
remains totally disjointed and ultimately meaningless. It is in order to play a
small part in arresting this trend that we have started and developed the Eagles
Nest Christian School.

This school is part of the church’s
evangelistic efforts and comes under our children’s department. Through the
school, we continue to labour hard to introduce children in the neighbourhood
to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and to a Christian worldview. The school
also provides us with a vital interface with many parents in our community. We
often use these opportunities for evangelistic purposes.

Mrs Honester Kumwenda, the Headteacher, introducing the school staff

Hence, whereas most Christian schools aim
to bring the children of Christian parents under the influence of Christian
teaching, when we started this school, we deliberately went into the community
to invite those who are not members of our church to bring their children to
our school. This is why even now 80% of the children in our school come from
non-Christian homes, or at least from homes where the parents or guardians are
not members of our church.

It would be difficult to tell how many of
these children come to genuine faith in Christ by the time they leave our
school at the end of Grade Seven because they do so before they become teens. We
have since baptised a number of them later in life. We have no doubt that the
time they spend in Eagle's Nest School is used by God to put precious truths in
their hearts that later germinate into saving faith.

A parent, Mr Katoto, thanking the church for the ministry of Eagle's Nest School

For me, this farewell service remains
special. I have never forgotten how I wept when we had our first farewell
service a few years ago. The children had become so precious to me that at one
point when I looked into their faces during the worship service the thought of parting with them gripped
me with grief. I wept like a baby. I have grown up now and do not cry any more.
However, my prayer continues to be that God will claim these young souls for
his own in due season, so that, if we do not ever meet on this side of eternity,
we will do so in heaven. Amen!

4 comments:

Once again you have pinned the issue Pastor Conrad. Appreciate your clarity of words in how you explained the effect of a secular society and education on our young children. What a wonderful way of evangelizing, by inviting members of the community rather than the church to send the children to the school. We can only pray that those truths will resonate somehere in the young hearts which will in turn lead them to repentance and saving faith. We pray for your ministry!

"..but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."Jn 4:4. I would encourage you and all the support staff to know how great a work you are doing.

Hi there Mr Mbewe. It is lovely to see what you are doing. I pray for God's grace in your life and your church, as you seek to expose many non-believers, and possibly believers in name only, to Christ.

I believe i may have been your 80th follower. I met you at Legacy, during the lunch break on the first or second day. I came up to you and asked if you were Conrad Mbewe and i told you it was a pleasure to meet you and that I was from Ghana, and was proud of what you are doing in Africa. I don't know how good your memory is. haha :)

Talk about my memory...It was once very good but has become very porous of late. I can hardly wait to get to heaven when it will be refurbished by God. Until then, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to remind me of such precious moments. Thanks misBoXIE, and I am honoured to welcome you as my 80th follower!